20 Years After Cold Fusion Debut, Another Team Claims Success

New Scientist is reporting that twenty years to the day since the initial announcement of a cold fusion discovery another Utah-based team is trying again. This announcement is being taken a little more seriously than the original, although some might say it is just more available wishful thinking. "Some researchers in the cold fusion field agree. 'In my view [it's] a cold fusion effect,' says Peter Hagelstein, also at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Others, though, are not convinced. Steven Krivit, editor of the New Energy Times, has been following the cold fusion debate for many years and also spoke at the ACS conference. 'Their hypothesis as to a fusion mechanism I think is on thin ice ... you get into physics fantasies rather quickly and this is an unfortunate distraction from their excellent empirical work,' he told New Scientist. Krivit thinks cold fusion remains science fiction. Like many in the field, he prefers to categorize the work as evidence of 'low-energy nuclear reactions,' and says it can be explained without relying on nuclear fusion."

Comments

Agreed, TANSTAAFL

[eldavojohn]

As long as I can use this new cold fusion device to power my perpetual motion machine, I'm good.

Agreed. Although IANAP, TANSTAAFL.

Although, I do understand what they're trying to achieve on a simple level (fusion at sustainable temperature with a net return of energy, albeit small at first) and wish them the best of luck. My uninformed gut thinks this is a pipe dream but they will most likely discover something.

Also, why is it that everyone jumps to announcements when it would be more sensible to call up another lab somewhere else and ask them to run the experiment and verify your results independently? Another question is why are they using the label of "cold fusion" when it seems largely they are observing things that are hard to explain so they must be cold fusion at work? These two things seem imprudent to me. Interesting though, very interesting.

Re:Agreed, TANSTAAFL

[VagaStorm]

Cold fusion == Holy grail == $$$. The question is if its them or the media that's calling it cold fusion...

Re:Agreed, TANSTAAFL

[FesterDaFelcher]

it would be more sensible to call up another lab somewhere else and ask them to run the experiment and verify your results independently?

"Hey Guys, we've been working on this for X years, spent millions building specialized equipment, etc, etc, etc. Think you could you just run up a quick experiment and verify... Hello?"

Re:Agreed, TANSTAAFL

[TinBromide]

I think "Cold" could possibly refer to the not-being-as-hot-as-the-heart-of-our-sun temperature range. Everything's relative, except absolute zero.

Some objectivity needed

[Mr. Underbridge]

I know one of the guys who helped debunk the thing way back when, and there's so much disgust for the original guys that it seems to be a foregone conclusion that cold fusion can never work. For example, in the current article, the tone seems to be that people really want to prove these guys wrong, which to me seems too much of an almost religious zeal. Worse, a lot of very prominent scientists have very vocally declared the thing impossible, and it will be a very hard thing for a lot of them to even consider the possibility that they were wrong. I think a lot of people made a false logical step from "these guys haven't proven their case for cold fusion" to "cold fusion can't work".

I think the original claim got a lot of fury from people who not only dismissed the research, but the way they announced it via press conference. In this case, the researchers are doing the right things - publishing first in peer reviewed journals, making presentations at the major conferences, getting the results validated by other experts.

It's not clear at this point that it *is* cold fusion, but the result is interesting enough that cold fusion seems to be a good possibility. Certainly it warrants investigation by other researchers who can keep an open mind. It would be funny if the biggest scientific joke of the last half of the 20th century ended up being the biggest discovery of the 21st.

Re:Some objectivity needed

[Chris Burke]

I think the original claim got a lot of fury from people who not only dismissed the research, but the way they announced it via press conference. In this case, the researchers are doing the right things - publishing first in peer reviewed journals, making presentations at the major conferences, getting the results validated by other experts.

Well yeah, of course they got a lot of well-earned ire for going around standard scientific channels, and a lot of well-earned derision when nobody else was able to reproduce their results. Ironically enough this was largely a case of cause and effect -- by skipping the peer-review and reproduction of experiments that usually precede such dramatic announcements, they skipped the step whereby the unknown factors in their experiment that prevented others from being able to reproduce the results from being discovered. So instead of "Hey we have this neat experiment, try to reproduce it" followed by "we couldn't, hey maybe there's a variable not accounted for", we got "Look world! Cold fusion!" followed by "We couldn't reproduce it, you're full of shit!"

My understanding is that these days people are regularly getting excess (as in more than expected, not net-positive) energy from the same experiment. It may not be fusion, but it's interesting, and would have a completely different image if not for the buffoonery of the experimenters.

So you're absolutely right, these guys are doing it the right way. Even if Krivit is right and the cold fusion hypothesis is just "physics fantasies", they're still doing "excellent empirical work" and that should be the key to figuring out what is going on.

Re:Some objectivity needed

[DerekLyons]

I know one of the guys who helped debunk the thing way back when, and there's so much disgust for the original guys that it seems to be a foregone conclusion that cold fusion can never work.

Most cold fusion press releases sound like this:

1. We looked for excess neutrons
2. We found excess neutrons!
3. ?????
4. Cold fusion!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 
Most cold fusion efforts seem to be little better than alchemy - tossing and mixing things together and then describing the effects in mystical technobabble. It would help a lot if they acted and sounded more like actual scientists with an actual theory of what they were trying to accomplish and actual test protocols describing how they intend to test elements of the theory and what the expected results are and why.
 
It doesn't help that cold fusion community has had problems in peer reviewing themselves (when all your 'peers' are True Believers, peer review really isn't worth much) and (worse yet) in demonstrating repeatable experiments.
 
 

I think the original claim got a lot of fury from people who not only dismissed the research, but the way they announced it via press conference.

 
The original (P&F) announcement generated a lot of fury - because the announcement was all they had. No papers, reviewed or not, no test protocols, nothing but a press release. It took a long time for any details to become available, as P&F's attention was concentrated on self aggrandizement rather than science.
 

In this case, the researchers are doing the right things - publishing first in peer reviewed journals, making presentations at the major conferences, getting the results validated by other experts.

 
Except they haven't actually had the results validated... They've produced something that looks like neutron tracks, and had an expert go "yeah, that looks like neutron tracks", but that's a long way from "is confirmed to be neutron tracks". This announcement sounds dangerously like P&F's - in that they found signs in a specific test setup, but didn't vary the setup. That they seem to have found neutrons with one very specific detection method, but don't appear to have tried any other detection methods raises huge red flags.

Do or Do Not, There is No Try.

[Wellington Grey]

New Scientist is reporting that twenty years to the day since the initial announcement of a cold fusion discovery another Utah-based team is trying again

Sorry, but anyone can try to achieve cold fusion, just as you can try to build a perpetual motion machine. Call me when you've actually achieved something.

Re:Read the DOE Report on 'Cold Fusion' =They fund

[EastCoastSurfer]

Not necessarily. Back in the day people had no idea how beer was made (and it wasn't always directly repeatable) but somehow the fermenting process started and beer was formed. Only later did scientists realize it was free flying yeast that got into the vats of mash that were out in the open.

I'm not saying this new CF is real, but looking for the yeast is how discoveries are made.

Sting theory isn't science, cold fusion is.

[Colin Smith]

One is testable, the other not.
 

Yep still good.

[w0mprat]

Even if the answer they get from their experiments is 'NO' it's still useful science. Any investigation at the edges of our understanding is automaticly worthwhile. The lay-person does not get this.